nlinline is a library (one header file) providing a simple API to perform
the most important configuration actions using netlink:
- interface up and down
- add/delete IPv4 addresses
- add/delete IPv4 routes
- add/delete IPv6 addresses
- add/delete IPv6 routes
- because there is not a standard API for network configuration (netdevice(3) is obsolete!).
- because the standard way to configure the net is de-facto NETLINK
- because many programs fork/execute ip(8) to configure networking
- because some programs use system(3) or fork/exec `/bin/sh -c ip ...', and this is even worse
- libnl is poorly documented, quite complex and generates run-time lib dependencies
nlinline is a minimal library. It depends only at compile time
only on the the linux glibc headers (linux-libc-dev).
We use nlinline in libpam-net.
It is a PAM module providing users with personal network namespaces.
Being a pam module it has stringent security requirements.
nlinline gives libpam-net the ability to set interfaces up and down
still having no run-time dependencies.